The Yes Men Are Revolting

Contratempo

Akerman films her mother Natalia, an elderly woman of Polish origin, in her Brussels apartment. For two hours, we will see them eating, chatting and sharing memories, sometimes accompanied by Sylvaine, Chantal's sister. Also, and to show how small the world has become, Chantal remains in contact with her mother at other times of the year via Skype from lands as far away from Belgium as Oklahoma or New York.

Wiens verlorene Töchter

Choenzey is a 47-year-old monk living in a Tibetan refugee monastery in South India. His spiritual master, Khensur Rinpoche, a revered high lama, has been dead for four years. According to Tibetan belief, he will soon be reincarnated. It is Choenzey's responsibility, as his closest disciple, to find the reincarnation and to look after him. The film follows Choenzey's search and his eventual discovery of an impish but gentle 4-year-old boy who is recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan State Oracle to be the reincarnation. Without sentimentality, the film captures the moving relationship that develops between the erstwhile disciple and his young master. (columbia.edu)

Complete strangers meet in a room to act out their sexual desires.

The film follows intrepid reporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and actor/advocates Malin Akerman, Mia Farrow, Ronan Farrow, Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Ashley Judd, Blake Lively, Eva Longoria, and Alfre Woodard to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States as they uncover the harshest forms of gender-based oppression and human rights violations, as well as the effective solutions being implemented to combat them.

Glamorous and hugely popular Joan Crawford raised herself from brutal poverty to Academy Award-winning stardom by guts, determination and hard work. During her 50-year career, she made over 80 films. But her obsessive perfectionism led to the later caricature of coat-hanger-wielding harridan that even the adoration of fans could not counter. Still, she has endured as one of the most popular icons of the movies, an early role model to a million young women who aspired to her image of stylish magnetic power and unquestioned independence.

Marthas is a PBS documentary about an extraordinary rite of passage in Laredo, Texas where teenage Mexican-American girls debut in a grand Colonial Ball dressed as American revolutionaries - a tradition that goes back 114 years.

As millions of women and girls take shots and pills to stop their periods, the meaning of menstruation changes. Current marketing of hormonal birth control (Depo-Provera, Seasonale, Seasonique, Lybrel, Anya) attracts customers by promising freedom from monthly periods. For many consumers, menstrual suppression eliminates painful monthly flow, giving them more control in their lives. For others, menstrual suppression represents a frightening shift in thinking about the human body and another dangerous experiment on woman’s health. Period: The End of Menstruation? interrogates the cultural and medical side effects of suppression before 'the curse' disappears.

The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.

This documentary tells the story of an unusual victim of the Nazi holocaust -- Kurt Gerron, a German film actor and cabaret star. During World War II, Gerron went from being a leading light of the German entertainment community (he made over 70 films and sang "Mack the Knife" in the first performance of The Three-Penny Opera) to a prisoner directing a propaganda film for the Nazis about a makeshift club at Theresienstadt, which was described as a "concentration camp for celebrities." Gerron was eventually executed at Auschwitz. Director Ilona Ziok combines archival footage of Gerron with interviews of peers and survivors who describe how Gerron tragically believed his gifts as an entertainer would save his life -- and how he enthusiastically kept performing right up to his death.

Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.

This documentary short by Alanis Obomsawin tells the story of Kahentiiosta, a young Kahnawake Mohawk woman arrested after the Oka Crisis' 78-day armed standoff in 1990. She was detained 4 days longer than the other women. Her crime? The prosecutor representing the Quebec government did not accept her indigenous name.

A study of life at Christmastime in Moose Factory, an old settlement mainly composed of Cree families on the shore of James Bay, composed entirely of children's crayon drawings and narrated by children.

An exciting inside look at the stars of Lucha Libre, Mexico's distinctly colorful brand of professional wrestling, where flesh and blood Superheroes have performed for generations of fans. With unprecedented access to some of the top Luchadores in the world, LUCHA MEXICO goes behind the mysterious mask to explore one of the most cherished traditions of Mexican culture.

In 2000, a California State Prison inmate serving Life Without Parole (LWOP) approached the warden to request a dedicated yard for men serving life sentences that would break the code of violence dominating prison life. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) subsequently transformed Yard A at California State Prison into The Progressive Programming Facility, which inmates call The Honor Yard. The only one of its kind in the United States, this experimental prison yard is free of violence, racial tensions, gang activity and illegal drug and alcohol use.

Ebony Goddess: Queen of Ilê Aiyê follows three women competing to be the carnival queen of Ilê Aiyê, a prominent and controversial Afro-Brazilian group with an all-black membership. The selection is based on Afro-centric notions of beauty, in counterpoint to prevailing standards of beauty in Brazil, a country famous for slim supermodels and plastic surgery. Contestants for the title of Ebony Goddess dress in flowing African-style garments, gracefully performing traditional Afro-Brazilian dances to songs praising the beauty of black women.

Festive Land examines one of the largest and most extraordinary popular celebrations in the world, the week-long Carnival that brings more than two million people to the streets of Salvador, the capital of Bahia, in northeastern Brazil. Carnival is the most expressive showcase of the unique cultural richness of Bahia, where African culture has survived, prospered, and evolved, mixing with other Brazilian influences to create forms found nowhere else in the world. The film captures this unique cultural energy through extraordinary footage of musical performances, dances, religious manifestations, and street celebrations. At the same time, Carnival reflects the racial and social tensions of Brazil's heterogeneous society. At first glance there appear to be two million people chaotically mixed on the streets, but a more detailed look reveals how patterns of segregation driven by racial, social and economic differences continue in Carnival.

In 1979 José Efraín Ríos Montt became a reborn Christian. He was offering a sermon when a group of soldiers burst into his Christian school, and asked him to lead a military coup in 1982. Francisco Chavez Raymundo and his sister were small children when Rios' political actions annihilated their community. In March, 2013 the lives of Francisco Chavez and Rios Montt converge in the same space. Rios is called upon to testify before Guatemalan justice and is confronted by a group of Mayan Ixiles, orphans and widows of the war, Francisco is one of them.

A year in the life of members of a troupe of Il Floriciccio circus performers.